Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: adb
Message-ID: <15445@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 11 Mar 91 19:07:46 GMT
References: <7606@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 23

In article <7606@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> 23n@sage.cc.purdue.edu writes:
> ... heard about adb and I wonder what its good for.

I use it in preference to the so-called "source level" debuggers
in most cases, because it works at a level closer to the actual
machine, which is sometimes necessary and almost always asking
more than the source-level debuggers can provide.  (However, "pi"
is very nice, if you have it.  I use "dmdpi" for debugging Blit-
family downloaded processes.)  Unless you are expert at machine-
language interpretation and have a good idea of the code generated
by your compiler, you're probably better off in most cases working
with a source-level debugger.

>Are there any tutorials around about its use?

Yes, for example in Volume 2 of the 7th Edition UNIX Programmer's
Reference Manual.  It does address a specific architecture (PDP-11),
so some of the details will be different for other architectures.

>If it's not worth learning now, what would I want to pick it up for?

We don't know what your values are,
so we can't tell you what you should decide.